Five Hard Truths About Critical Infrastructure Protection

Hard Truth: Most critical infrastructure providers don't know what digital vulnerabilities they have, where to find them, or how to fix them.

Each critical infrastructure provider must develop and implement cybersecurity countermeasures tailored to its specific physical and digital infrastructure. This is hugely unfamiliar territory for most providers, who have relied on their equipment vendors to handle both ICS/SCADA and IT security.

Unfortunately, neither traditional critical infrastructure vendors nor IT security vendors are fully equipped to counter the unique hybrid threat of cyber-enabled critical infrastructure attacks: The former aren't schooled in IT security, while the latter aren't used to protecting non-IT physical assets. Even worse, sometimes ICS/SCADA vendors don't reveal vulnerabilities or even purposely install capabilities – such as unremovable backdoors – that attackers could easily co-opt.

Once considered the unthinkable, real-life cyber attacks on critical infrastructure have taken center stage in the past three years. Advancing technologies, evolving cyber threats and a little piece of malware called Stuxnet have catapulted cybersecurity of real-world infrastructure from an academic backwater to a top government and industry priority. From power plants to water treatment sites to traffic control systems, critical infrastructure once thought invulnerable to targeted cyber attacks now lies squarely in the crosshairs.

Over the past two decades, asset owners and operators have added IT systems to help improve management of the ubiquitous industrial control systems (ICS) that perform essential mechanical functions of all kinds. These systems have led to improved service, lower costs and technological marvels such as smart grids. Unfortunately, they have also exposed critical infrastructure to software vulnerabilities that adversaries can exploit through malware and advanced persistent threats (APTs).

Critical infrastructure providers now find themselves in a harrowing position: They must protect both physical and digital assets, but often know less than their adversaries do about those assets' vulnerabilities and how to remediate them. The complexity of IT-enabled critical infrastructure has multiplied the difficulty of protecting it, as have the skyrocketing frequency, sophistication and severity of cyber attacks over the past ten years. Consequences for failure can be catastrophic, but finding the right resources to improve protection can be challenging and expensive – making the decision to invest in security a painful business dilemma.

To protect themselves and their stakeholders from escalating cyber threats, critical infrastructure owners must first acknowledge five hard truths, according to Raju Dodhiawala, vice president and general manager at ManTech.

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